The team lead by Professor Yong Joo, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University has been down-selected as a Phase II U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Battery500 Seedlings project.

In 2017, Joo group partnered with EIC Labs started working on the development of highly load cathode and coated separator for Li-sulfur batteries as one of 12 Phase I DOE Battery 500 Seedling Projects whose purpose is to identify proof-of-concept that will complement the research in the Battery 500 Program to research, develop and demonstrate lithium-battery technologies capable of achieving a cell specific energy of less than 500 Wh/kg while achieving 1,000 cycles. Now 18 months later, the proposal on the development of highly loaded cathode, coated separator and gel electrolyte for high rate Li-sulfur batteries by Joo, Prof. Jin Suntivich, Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell and EIC Labs has been down-selected for Phase II. 

The seedling award received $360K initially and will now be receiving an additional $833K in funding. Maximizing the synergy among a highly loaded sulfur cathode, a thermally-stable and high-rate separator with functionalized graphene coating, and a gel electrolyte via scalable nano-manufacturing processes that Joo and collaborators have been developing can be critical to realize the premise of lithium-sulfur batteries in near future.